If you were to inform everyone you met for the rest of your CRHing "career" about CRH, you likely wouldn't create 10 serious CRHers in your lifetime. The majority of people that I know don't have the free cash to give it a serious try. Several might give it a go, but would quickly become disinterested after a few skunk boxes of halves, dime boxes that produce about 1 per box, etc. It takes a rare breed willing to go to the time, trouble, and expense to CRH with the meager finds that most of us have. I'm still convinced that at least 90%+ of us would come out several dollars ahead in the long run by just buying the silver outright.
However, it pays to be smart. When I first began serious CRHing a few years ago it was not uncommon to find CWR rolls of halves that had been in the banks' vaults for a year or more. Now they rarely last a week. Nearly every bank I visit now says that they have at least 1 person that comes in regularly looking for halves, and this was definitely no the case just a few short years ago. How did that happen? Sure the rising price of silver had something to do with it, but word of mouth is the main culprit. Even this very forum has undoubtedly cost most of us silver we would have found otherwise. It was this very forum (more precisely Rich Hartford's finds) that caused me to start the hobby. I had known about CRH my entire life, but I had no idea some people were finding the amounts that they were, especially the 90%ers. The fact that people were finding Walkers with regularity shocked me.
The reason I don't talk about it locally, is that I don't want any local competition. Call it greed or whatever, but I already have enough trouble just finding halves to search in my area, let alone silver. Plus, I have a very limited supply of dump banks. Two good ones to be exact. Some newbie might not be nearly as courteous to them as I am and get us both cut off. No dump banks = no CRHing. Not everyone is nice and will "play by the rules." You can find several examples of that right here on this forum.
Here's an example of how word-of-mouth can totally ruin your activity: I used to fish a lot. There is a small local lake about 15 miles from my house. Way back when I was in high school, nobody fished it. The water stays chocolate-milk muddy year-round. The rumor was that there were no fish to speak of in that mudhole. Well, a buddy of mine and I decided to fish it one day after school. We caught several bass...BIG bass. Most were in the 4-6 pound range with a few even bigger. We hit it every day after school that week, and the results were practically the same every day. Of course, being kids, we were bragging about it at school to classmates, teachers, anyone that would listen. Well, that Saturday finally rolls around and we're excited that we have the whole day to fish our new hotspot. We arrived just after daylight to find no less than 10 boats already in the water. At least 5 more arrived after we did. I got to talking to another fisherman on the water about all the boats and the fact that I had never even seen another fisherman in my life fishing here. His response is that a couple of local kids had really been "tearing them up" on this lake lately. I don't know how many big bass I saw caught that day. But these guys didn't release them like we did. They kept them. By the end of the year, it was hard to catch a fish out of that lake. Also, there was no parking at this particular lake. An old gravel road lead directly to the water, but was surrounded by private property. All the new fisherman parked on the private property and as many inconsiderate folks are prone to do, left trash everywhere. Within 2 years, the private property was all posted "No trespassing" and the road to the lake was blocked by a huge concrete barrier so that no one could get in. I lost my favorite fishing spot because I didn't keep my mouth shut...but I learned my lesson.
Another noteworthy observation: Of all the people that I saw fishing that first day when the word got out, I recognized exactly NONE of them. There were no classmates or teachers that I told. But, the poeple that I told, apparently told someone else, who told someone else, etc etc etc. I certainly don't want that in my CRHing area.
I was going to put up a pic of him in my post this morning but forgot, but I am glad you did!
